The City of Detroit, SharedStreets, and NACTO to Pilot New Data Standard for Dockless Mobility

Oct 29, 2018

Detroit to pilot a solution for cities working with e-scooter and dockless bike-share providers to share and analyze trip data to allocate street space to sustainable transportation, reduce traffic crashes, and provide more equitable transportation access

Detroit – October 29, 2018 – Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) and SharedStreets today announced a partnership to pilot a comprehensive standard and analysis tool for mobility data on dockless scooters and bicycles. The pilot will be built using scooter data provided by Bird and Lime. The resulting data standards and open source tools will allow other cities and private sector mobility operators to collaboratively manage streets and achieve key mobility, safety and equity goals, while protecting privacy. This collaboration was announced by Mayor Duggan and Janette Sadik-Khan, principal at Bloomberg Associates and chair of NACTO, at the sixth-annual CityLab conference in Detroit, hosted by Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Mayor of New York City, 2002-2013.

The goal of the forthcoming dockless data standard is to give cities a universal way to collect and aggregate critical information on the operation of scooters and bikes – including trip origins and destinations, neighborhood availability, travel times and usage. Detroit is pioneering this new standard to ensure their partnerships with mobility companies achieve equity and safety goals.

This work will be led by SharedStreets – a non-profit developing new models for digital public-private collaboration. SharedStreets builds tools and data governance models designed to make it easier for cities to work with companies to leverage data to improve urban mobility. SharedStreets’ work is essential to establishing an open-source data ecosystem that allows cities and companies to work from consistent transportation datasets while rigorously protecting personal privacy.

“Cities are engines of innovation — especially when the public and private sector work together,” said Mike Bloomberg. “This data-driven partnership will pave the way for cities to make progress toward safer streets and cleaner air.”

“In just one year, scooters have completely transformed mobility. In Detroit, we took a forward-looking view on this new option to understand how it could make it easier for Detroiters to get around,” said Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. “Our next step is to use data to better inform our decisions, whether it’s providing more mobility options in more neighborhoods or making sure scooters aren’t blocking the right of way.’”

“We’ve made progress updating the hardware of today’s streets, and with SharedStreets we can build the software we need to manage the streets of tomorrow,” said Janette Sadik-Khan. “By merging private sector data with public-sector street design tools, we can keep people moving and build cities that work for everyone, no matter how they get around.

“Our cities are open to new forms of transportation, but the public sector needs the data on how the public gets around,” said Seleta Reynolds, President of NACTO and General Manager of the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT). “Los Angeles led the way with our Mobility Data Specification and now cities across the country can take the next steps together, building smarter, safer streets.

The dockless mobility data agreement follows the announcement made last month by SharedStreets that Ford Motor Company, Uber Inc. and Lyft have signed onto the platform as founding, private sector partners. These companies have committed to provide a growing network of global cities with critical data on curb regulation and parking demand, traffic speeds, and data on for-hire vehicle pick-ups and drop-offs along crowded curb space, among the most critical datasets on city streets.

By allowing both the public and private sectors to speak in a universal transportation data language, these partnerships give cities unparalleled access to data, allowing them to make better planning and investment decisions. They also fill a long-missing link for mobility companies, providing a common standard for sharing data across city borders, providing a launching pad for public-private collaboration on reducing traffic deaths and preparing cities for the unprecedented transportation technological advancement emerging in cities.

About SharedStreets
First funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and developed in collaboration with NACTO and the Open Transport Partnership, SharedStreets is neutral, anonymized clearinghouse for data collected by transportation providers, private companies and government agencies, as well as a hub for industry-leading data analysis, traffic planning, street design and development of new technologies. Already operating in over 30 cities around the world, the platform overcomes long-standing legal, regulatory and technological barriers between the public and private sectors by converting today’s ad hoc, disparate transportation data sources into a mutually readable, shared, global standard for the first time. It introduces a universal language for digitally describing every aspect of city streets, opening new markets to private sector innovators and eliminating the need to manually clean, collate and transfer data sources, saving crucial public funds.

About NACTO
NACTO is an association of 74 major North American cities and transit agencies formed to exchange transportation ideas, insights, and practices and cooperatively approach national transportation issues. The organization’s mission is to build cities as places for people, with safe, sustainable, accessible, and equitable transportation choices that support a strong economy and vibrant quality of life.

About Bird
Bird is a last-mile electric vehicle sharing company dedicated to bringing affordable, environmentally-friendly transportation solutions to communities across the world. It provides a fleet of shared electric scooters that can be accessed via smartphone. Birds give people looking to take a short journey across town, or down that “last mile” from the subway or bus to their destination, a way to do so that does not pollute the air or add to traffic. Bird works closely with the cities in which it operates to be a reliable and affordable transportation option for people who live and work there. Founded in 2017 by transportation pioneer Travis VanderZanden, Bird is headquartered in Venice, Calif., and is rapidly expanding around the world. Follow Bird on Instagram, on Twitter at @BirdRide, and find more information at www.bird.co.

About Lime
Lime is catalyzing a shift in urban mobility by empowering riders with affordable, sustainable shared transportation options that reach every neighborhood. By partnering with local communities to deploy fleets of free-floating bikes, e-bikes and electric scooters, Lime makes active transportation more convenient and equitable for residents and visitors, while helping cities fight car congestion. Lime operates in over 100 communities around the globe, offering industry-leading data transparency and Lime Access discounts for disadvantaged communities. Learn more at www.li.me. For more info on Lime, you can visit this FAQ; you can also refer to the full list of cities Lime serves here. You can find Lime-S photos here, b-roll here, and a full media kit here.